Odisha received eight complaints from female students on ragging, discrimination and harassment across colleges and a university.
Govt urges use of Tele-Manas helpline and app for mental health support and early reporting.
Guidelines issued to implement UGC’s 2023 grievance redressal regulations for transparent complaint handling.
Higher Education Minister Suryabanshi Suraj told the state parliament on Friday that over the course of two years, the Odisha government has received eight complaints from female students at various institutions and universities about ragging, sexual discrimination, and harassment.
In response to a written inquiry from BJD lawmaker Arvind Mohapatra, the minister of higher education stated that six colleges and one university had filed complaints with his department.
The government has received two complaints from female students of Government Autonomous College, Rourkela, while other allegations were received from F M Autonomous College (Balasore), G M University (Sambalpur), Abhimanyu Samanta Singhar Degree College (Jajpur), Athamalik College (Angul), Anchal College (Bargarh), and D A V Autonomous College, Titlagarh (Bolangir), he said.
The department has issued guidelines to all state public universities and colleges under its jurisdiction to encourage students to use the "Tele-Manas" national mental health helpline (14416), which offers free, round-the-clock tele-counselling support, to prevent such delicate incidents at the level of higher education institutions in the future, he said.
He also mentioned that anyone interested in self-assessment tools can use the Tele-Manas mobile application.
The minister added that in order to provide an equitable and open grievance redressal system at colleges and universities, the department has also released guidelines for the implementation of the UGC (Redressal of Grievances of Students) Regulations, 2023.
